Velvet Static

The microphone is too close to my mouth. I know this because the pop filter is fogging up with every breath, and the little red light on the interface is blinking like it's having a panic attack. Which makes two of us.

"Whenever you're ready," says the voice in my headphones.

I'm not ready. I'm sitting in a closet that smells like cedar and old sweaters, wearing a borrowed silk robe that itches my collarbone, and I'm about to record a GFE script for a man I've never met. Girlfriend Experience. That's what the agency calls it. Twenty minutes of whispered intimacy, of inside jokes that don't exist, of "how was your day, baby" and "I missed you so much" and "tell me what you're wearing." It's acting. It's improv. It's a performance of closeness so specific it makes my teeth ache.

But it pays. It pays better than the bakery, better than the temp gigs, better than anything else I've found since I moved to this city with two suitcases and a degree I'm not using.

"Lena?" The voice again. Marcus, the sound engineer, or producer, or whatever his title is. He's somewhere in a room on the other side of the wall, watching me through a window I can't see. "We can take a break if you need."

"I'm fine."

I'm not fine. My hands are shaking. The script is printed on three pages of copy paper, and the words are starting to blur. I've read it four times. It's not complicated. It's a phone call between two people who've been together for two years. He's on a business trip. She's home alone. She misses him. She wants to hear his voice. That's it. That's the whole thing.

But there's a line near the end, right before the fade-out, where she says, "I don't know what I'd do without you."

I can't stop looking at it.

"Start from the top," Marcus says. "And remember, slower this time. You're not reading the news. You're talking to someone you love."

I want to tell him I've never been in love. Not like this. Not the kind that makes you say things like *I don't know what I'd do without you*. I've had boyfriends. I've had the kind of relationships that burn hot and fizzle out, the kind that end with a text message at 2 a.m. and a box of your stuff on the front porch. But I've never had the other kind. The kind that lasts. The kind that makes you feel like you'd fall apart if they left.

Maybe that's why I'm good at this. Maybe pretending is easier when you've never had the real thing.

I take a breath. I lean into the microphone. I close my eyes.

"Hey," I say. My voice comes out softer than I expected. Lower. "Hey, it's me."

Marcus doesn't stop me. That's good.

"I know you're probably in a meeting or something. I know you're busy. I just..." I pause. The script says to pause here. "I just wanted to hear your voice."

The words feel strange in my mouth. Not wrong, exactly. Just borrowed. Like wearing someone else's coat and finding a receipt in the pocket for a life you've never lived.

"I had a weird day," I continue. "Nothing bad. Just weird. I kept thinking about that time we drove up the coast, remember? When we got lost and you refused to use the GPS because you said you had a *sense of direction* and then we ended up at that diner in the middle of nowhere with the world's best pie?"

I'm not reading anymore. I'm improvising. The script says *talk about a shared memory*, but it doesn't specify which one, and I'm pulling from nothing, from a reservoir of moments I've never had, stitching them together like a quilt made of other people's clothes.

"The waitress called you 'hon' and you got all flustered. You never know what to do when strangers are nice to you." I laugh, and it sounds real. It sounds like a laugh I might have if I were someone else. "I think that's why I love you. You're so suspicious of kindness. Like you're waiting for the catch."

Marcus makes a sound in my headphones. Approval, maybe. Or surprise. I can't tell.

"I should let you go," I say. "I know you're busy. But I just wanted to say..." Another pause. The script says *say something vulnerable*. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

The words hang in the air. The cedar smell is making me dizzy. Or maybe it's the truth of it, the way the line lands in my chest like a stone in still water.

Because here's the thing I haven't told anyone. Here's the thing I've been carrying around like a secret I don't want to name.

I've been talking to someone. Not like this. Not for work. But there's a man I've never met, a subscriber to one of my other channels, the ASMR stuff I do on the side, and he sends me messages. Long ones. About his day. About his divorce. About the way he can't sleep at night unless he hears my voice. And I answer him. I shouldn't, but I do. I answer him at 3 a.m. when I can't sleep either, and we talk about nothing, about everything, about the way loneliness feels like a room with no windows.

His name is David. He's forty-three. He lives in Portland. He sends me pictures of his cat, a fat orange tabby named Chairman Meow, and I send him voice notes about my day, the real ones, not the scripted ones. And somewhere along the way, I started to mean the things I said. The *I miss you*. The *I wish you were here*. The *I don't know what I'd do without you*.

But we've never met. We've never even video chatted. He could be anyone. He could be lying about everything. And I'm sitting in a closet, pretending to love a stranger for money, while a different stranger is slowly becoming the person I think about when I wake up.

"Cut," Marcus says. "That was good. Really good. Let's do it again, but this time, can you make it a little more... I don't know. Longing?"

I nod. I don't trust my voice.

The red light blinks. The pop filter fogs. And I start again, from the top, from *hey, it's me*, and I try to find the longing he wants. But all I can think about is David, and the way he said my name last night, not Lena, my real name, the one I only told him once, whispered it like a prayer, like something sacred.

I don't know what I'd do without you.

The thing is, I might have to find out. Because I haven't heard from him in three days. And I'm starting to wonder if he was ever real at all.